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For neoclassicism in architecture, see also Neoclassical Architecture . For neoclassicism in music, see also Neoclassicism (music) . Neoclassicism (sometimes rendered as '''Neo-Classicism''' or '''Neo-classicism''') is the name given to quite distinct Movements in the Visual Art s, Literature , Theatre , Music , and Architecture . These movements were in effect at various times between the 18th and the 20th Centuries . This article addresses what these "neoclassicisms" have in common. What any "neo"-classicism depends on most fundamentally is a consensus about a body of work that has achieved '' Canon ic'' status (''illustration, below''). These are the "classics." Ideally— and neoclassicism is essentially an art of an ideal— an artist, well-schooled and comfortably familiar with the canon, does not repeat it in lifeless reproductions, but synthesizes the tradition anew in each work. This sets a high standard, clearly; but though a neoclassical artist who fails to achieve it may create works that are inane, vacuous or even mediocre, gaffes of taste and failures of craftsmanship are not commonly neoclassical failings. Novelty, improvisation, self-expression, and blinding inspiration are not neoclassical virtues; neoclassicism exhibits perfect control of an idiom. It does not recreate art forms from the ground up with each new project, as Modernism demanded. "Make it new" was the modernist credo of the poet Ezra Pound . assembles the canon of Roman ruins and Roman sculpture into one vast imaginary gallery (1756)]] Speaking and thinking in English, "neoclassicism" in each art implies a particular canon of "classic" models. We recognize them, even if we struggle against their power: is a neoclassic writer; Ming ceramics pay homage to Sung Celadon Porcelain s; Italian 15th century humanists learn to write a "Roman" hand we call Italic (a.k.a. Carolingian ); Neo-Babylonian culture is a neoclassical revival, and in Persia the "classic" religion of Zoroaster , Zoroastrianism , is revived after centuries, to "re-Persianize" a culture that had fallen away from its own classic Achaemenean past. Within the direct Western tradition, the earliest movement motivated by a neoclassicial inspiration is a Roman style that was first distinguished by the German art historian Friedrich Hauser (''Die Neuattische Reliefs'' Stuttgart 1889), who identified the style-category he called "Neo-Attic" among sculpture produced in later Hellenistic circles during the last century or so BCE and in Imperial Rome; the corpus that Hauser called "Neo-Attic" consists of bas reliefs molded on decorative vessels and plaques, employing a figural and drapery style that looked for its canon of "classic" models to late 5th and early 4th century Athens and Attica. NEOCLASSICISM IN ARCHITECTURE AND THE VISUAL ARTS Main article: Neoclassical Architecture and completed in 1885, in Athens , Greece .]] In the Visual Art s the European movement called "neoclassicism" began after ''ca'' 1765, as a reaction against both the surviving Baroque and Rococo styles, and as a desire to return to the perceived "purity" of the arts of Rome , the more vague perception ("ideal") of Ancient Greek arts (where almost no western artist had actually been) and, to a lesser extent, 16th century Renaissance Classicism . Contrasting with the Baroque and the Rococo , Neo-classical paintings are devoid of pastel colors and haziness; instead, they have sharp colors with Chiaroscuro . In the case of Neo-classicism in France, a prime example is Jacques Louis David whose paintings often use greek elements to extoll the French Revolution 's virtues (state before family). , "The artist moved to despair at the grandeur of antique fragments", 1778–79]] Each "neo"- classicism selects some models among the range of possible classics that are available to it, and ignores others. The neoclassical writers and talkers, patrons and collectors, artists and sculptors of 1765 - 1830 paid homage to an ''idea'' of the generation of 's generation, frescos in Nero's '' Domus Aurea '', Pompeii and Herculaneum and through renewed admiration of Nicholas Poussin . Much "neoclassical" painting is more classicisizing in subject matter than in anything else. There is an anti-Rococo strain that can be detected in some European Architecture of the earlier 18th century, most vividly represented in the Palladian Architecture of Georgian Britain and Ireland , but also recognizable in a classicizing vein of architecture in Berlin . It is a robust architecture of self-restraint, academically selective now of "the best" Roman models. palace by Luigi Vanvitelli 's pupil Antonio Rinaldi , 1770s]] Neoclassicism first gained influence in overdoors hint of neoclassicism; the furnishings are fully Italian Rococo (''illustration, left''). 's design for a vase on stand, Rome ca 1780, appealed more to his English and French patrons. Similar gilt-bronze vases were made in London and Paris, from ca. 1768 onwards.]] But a second neoclassic wave, more severe, more studied (through the medium of engravings) and more consciously archaeological, is associated with the height of the Napoleonic Empire . In France, the first phase of neoclassicism is expressed in the "Louis XVI style", the second phase in the styles we call "Directoire" or "Empire." Italy clung to Rococo until the Napoleonic regimes brought the new archeaological classicism, which was embraced as a political statement by young, progressive, urban Italians with republican leanings. ''(1784) is not just neoclassical in subject]] The high tide of neoclassicism in painting is exemplified in early paintings by Jacques-Louis David (''illustration, right'') and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres ' entire career. David's '' Oath Of The Horatii '' was painted in Rome and made a splash at the Paris Salon of 1784. Its central perspective is perpendicular to the picture plane, made more emphatic by the dim arcade behind, against which the heroic figures are disposed as in a Frieze , with a hint of the artificial lighting and staging of Opera , and the classical coloring of Nicholas Poussin . In Sculpture , the most familiar representatives are the Italian Antonio Canova , the Englishman John Flaxman and the Dane Bertel Thorvaldsen . (1735 - 1805), 1778 In the decorative arts, neoclassicism is exemplified in Empire furniture made in Paris, London, New York, Berlin; in Biedermeier furniture made in Austria; in Karl Friedrich Schinkel 's museums in Berlin, Sir John Soane 's Bank of England in London and the newly built " Capitol " in Washington, DC ; and in Wedgwood 's Bas Relief s and "black basaltes" Vase s. The Scots architect Charles Cameron created palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born Catherine II The Great in Russian St. Petersburg: the style was international. Indoors, neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic interior, inspired by the rediscoveries at window frames turned into Gilded mirrors, fireplaces topped with temple fronts, now all looking quite bombastic and absurd. The new interiors sought to recreate an authentically Roman and genuinely ''interior'' vocabulary, employing flatter, lighter motifs, sculpted in low Frieze -like relief or painted in monotones '' En Camaïeu '' ("like cameos"), isolated medallions or vases or busts or ''bucrania'' or other motifs, suspended on swags of laurel or ribbon, with slender arabesques against backgrounds, perhaps, of "Pompeiian red" or pale tints, or stone colors. The style in France was initially a Parisian style, the "goût Grèc" not a court style. Only when the plump, young king acceded to the throne in 1771 did his fashion-loving Queen bring the "Louis XVI" style to court. , Edinburgh, Playfair employs a Greek Doric octastyle portico]] From about 1800 a fresh influx of Greek architectural examples, seen through the medium of etchings and engravings, gave a new impetus to neoclassicism that is called the Greek Revival. Neoclassicism continued to be a major force in Academic Art through the 19th Century and beyond— a constant antithesis to Romanticism or Gothic Revival s— although from the late 19th Century on it had often been considered anti-modern, or even reactionary, in influential critical circles. By the mid-19th century, several European cities - notably St Petersburg and Munich - were transformed into veritable museums of Neoclassical architecture. In American architecture, neoclassicism was one expression of the American Renaissance movement, ''ca'' 1890 - 1917 ; its last manifestation was in Beaux-Arts Architecture , and its very last, large public projects were the Lincoln Memorial (highly criticised at the time), the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the American Museum Of Natural History 's Roosevelt Memorial. These were White Elephant s as they were built. In the British Raj, Sir Edwin Lutyens ' monumental city planning for New Delhi marks the glorious sunset of neoclassicism. Soon World War II destroyed all illusions. COVERT NEOCLASSICISM IN MODERN STYLES Meanwhile, conservative modernist architects like or Sue Et Mare ; crisp, extremely low-relief friezes of damsels and gazelles in every medium; fashionable dresses that were draped or cut on the bias to recreate Grecian lines; the art dance of Isadora Duncan ; the Streamline Moderne styling of US post offices and county court buildings built as late as 1950; and the Roosevelt dime. Neoclassic themes can even be detected in the Smith Tower , Seattle. LITERARY NEOCLASSICISM A conscious classicism had entered English literature since the Renaissance. Aside from the attempts at Latin Prosody associated with the University poets, Classicism is detectable in the plays of Ben Jonson , the formal structures of which contrast sharply with those of William Shakespeare . The arts do not always march in step, and "neoclassicism" in English literature is associated with the " Augustan " writers of the early 18th century, all the heirs of John Dryden and Milton . The giant among their inspiring Latin classics was Virgil . Aside from the Augustan Alexander Pope , major writers of the period include the realist Daniel Defoe and the satirist Jonathan Swift . The ensuing generation of "Romantic" writers had its origins at the height of neoclassicism in the visual arts, about 1800. In France, the exemplar of literary neoclassicism is the theatre of Jean Racine . Racine adhered to the " Classical Unities " derived from Aristotle 's '' Poetics ''. Neoclassical ideals are also evident in his balanced lines of verse, restraint in emotion, refinement in diction, avoidance of excess. The tragic tone was not offset by moments of realism or humor (as in Shakespeare). In 1786 , the German literary master Goethe ended his proto-Romantic Sturm Und Drang period with his trip to Italy (recounted in his 1817 work, '' Italienische Reise ''). Afterwards, he and his colleague Schiller emulated the themes and sensibility of Greek Tragedy in works like '' Iphigenia Auf Tauris '' (''Iphigenia at Tauris''), '' Römische Elegien '' (''Roman Elegies''), and '' Faust ''. Neoclassical themes also dominated the work of German poet Hölderlin . NEOCLASSICISM PART II: BETWEEN THE WARS There was an entire 20th Century movement in the Arts which was also called Neo-classicism. It encompassed at least music, philosophy, and literature. It was between the end of World War I and the end of World War II . For information on the musical aspects, see 20th Century Classical Music#Neoclassicism and Neoclassicism (music) . For information on the philosophical aspects, see Great Books Literary Neoclassicism, 20th-century style The 20th Century literary movement termed neoclassicism is a movement that rejected the extreme romanticism of (for example) Dada , in favour of restraint, religion (specifically Christianity) and a reactionary political programme. Although the foundations for this movement were laid by T.E. Hulme , the most famous neoclassicists were T.S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis . SEE ALSO
FURTHER READING See also the References at Neoclassical Architecture
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